Gale "cleaning-up Peacekeepers in District 2." I believe, Pulratch made a off-hand comment about Gale pulling a "stunt" with the Head Peacekeeper and now the District loves him? Can we have that story? for Anonymous -------Everyone's just full of stories. The grown-ups are arguing about whether or not it makes up for what happened in the mountain, and most of them think it is. Niobe Crane says Gale Hawthorne personally pulled down the wall outside the compound. Pyramus Parker claims to have seen him personally beat the tar out of our Head Peacekeeper, Gabbro Newsome. Olivine Liscombe says he is doing penance and was willing to die to save a few of us.

I don't know if any of it is true, because I didn't the best vantage point.

I was in the caves under Gabbro's last fortress. All I know is that I'm not there anymore, and one thing I know for sure is that Gale Hawthorne had to help my big brother get out, because he had a broken ankle and couldn't make the climb topside.

This is what I know:

My mother is an accountant. She used to keep the books for the Peacekeepers at the training center in the foothills. My father worked in the mountain, but he got away from the fires and came out on the trains. He was on television with Katniss Everdeen, and he didn't kill her, and she didn't kill him. When someone else shot her, he helped medical people get through, even though his face was torn up. He says he is sick of fighting. He wasn't at home when everything happened.

I know that when there was fighting in the Capitol, a lot of rebels left to join it. They thought there was a lid on things here. But lids sometimes come off. I don't know how everything happened. I only know that Gabbro came back to town with a whole squad and said it was time to get some law and order back in District Two. Then everyone that lived around the training center was told to go underground, because the rebels were planning a bombing attack.

Only there was no bombing. Just guarded exits and day-long harangues about disloyalty. Sometimes people were brought up and told to confess to things, like sharing information about the mountain or planning treason. They'd be hit and beaten until they agreed, and then we'd hear about how the world was falling to pieces, and the barbarians were at our doorstep. I know that Gabbro sometimes talked to people who weren't there, then said they gave him orders. I know that once, they ordered him to take Ambrosia Vesey, my brother's girlfriend, into a room upstairs, and she screamed and screamed, and now she doesn't talk.

And I know that one day last week, Gabbro had his Peacekeepers wire up bombs all around the caves. He said we deserved to die the same way the people we betrayed died. He wired up cameras to feed the images up to the surface, and put up screens so we could see him give the speech before he blew us up.

There were people gathered around, but no one dared do anything, for fear he would kill us all. I saw my father standing in a line with rebel soldiers, looking wild with his scarred face.

And then Gale Hawthorne stepped forward. He went right up to Gabbro and he set down his gun, and he said, "I did it. It was me. It was my idea to blow up the mountain. I don't know any of those people on the screens. They had nothing to do with it. Kill me if you have to. I earned it. But those people down there never did anything."

My mother pulled my brother and me close. There was a bomb only a foot away from the place where we'd been assigned to sleep.

"No. They're not. They're people trying to deal with a world that's changing."

"I don't accept your change!"

"I know." Gale knelt down. "And you'll do what you have to. To me. But not to the people down below. They're District Two people. Your own people. Good people. I've learned that. I never knew it before. I'm glad to know it now. You must know it, Newsome. You grew up with them."

Gabbro shook his head and starts one of his rants, waving the detonator crazily. I could hear people crying, screaming.

But the bombs never blew.

Gale kept him talking until suddenly, there was a single gunshot, then he jumped forward and grabbed Gabbro, throwing him to the ground. The feed went out, and I didn't see anything until the rebels were down with us, and Gale was helping my brother out. It turned out he and Dad had worked together on a plan, and it involved sneaking an electronics engineer in to jam the signal on the detonators. Once that was done, the rebels and a lot of people who wouldn't have been rebels before stormed the complex and took the last of the Peacekeepers out, then came to rescue us.

"That was when he beat up Gabbro," Pyramus says. "When the lights went out."

"He did not," Niobe says. "Gabbro was already down. He just arrested him, then went and rescued people."

"Arrested him? So how come he ended up beaten up and in the hospital?"

"Probably someone's dad," I say.

"Maybe," Olivine says. "But it was really brave, just going right up there like that, and putting down his gun. Gabbro could have killed him for real any time."

Niobe climbs up on a crate. "I heard that where he comes from, back in Twelve, he led the whole district away from a Capitol bombing raid..."

Haymitch finds out Caesar Flickerman was a victor. for bluejayfic-------When we get to Peeta's place, I almost turn around and walk back out the door. There's no way I'm watching what he has set up, especially not now that he's forced me into sobriety. I don't think I'd be able to watch it dead drunk. I can't think why Peeta would want to, let alone why he'd put Katniss and me through it.

"Wait," he says when I turn. "Please, Haymitch. I asked Effie to send me this. It's the first Quarter Quell."

"Why?" Katniss asks, speaking for both of us, since I'm a little too angry to speak. "Why would you ever look at another Games tape?"

"I had to. I had to see it for myself."

I find my voice and sit down on his couch. "The first Quell. This is what you have to see. After everything."

"Look." He presses a button, and the video picks up at the interviews.

The show is run by a middle aged woman with a three foot high sky-blue hat with live birds in embedded cages. I think her name was Candria Light. She was Caesar Flickerman's predecessor. She is still in the first half of the interviews. She's just interviewed the girl from District Five, if I’m counting right. "And our other tribute from District Five," she says. "Charlie Flynn!"

The boy gives her an easy, friendly sort of smile. He reminds me of Peeta. "Hi, Candria," he says. "That's some hat. Much better than last year's."

"Thank you."

"Can I ask you something?"

"I think that's my job... but what?"

"What happens when the birds need to relieve themselves?" The audience laughs. He pretends not to notice. "I've just been sitting here wondering about that. If I'm going to die, I have to know that first."

"Oh, there's a little trap." Candria says, and unpins the hat. She's careful to keep it upright to not disturb the birds too much.

Charlie Flynn peers down into it and says, "Huh. Well, that's that. I guess I can go to the arena with a calm mind now."

This gets another laugh, and this time, Charlie looks over his shoulder and grins at the audience.

"Do you see it?" Peeta asks, pausing on the image of the grinning boy.

Katniss looks at him like he's crazy. "See... what?"

"I guess I didn't show you everything before. But no one laughed before Charlie started talking. Do you remember watching Mags's Games? No one laughed there, either. I think Charlie was the first one to make them laugh. No one laughs after, either. She just gets them to say what their strengths are and what kind of Game they'll play. It's Charlie everyone remembered."

"He's the victor, isn't he?" I ask.

"Yeah. But he doesn't get all of his sponsors until here." Peeta frowns. "Don't you see it, Haymitch?"

I stare at the boy. There is something familiar about him. About that weird, toothy grin, the slicked back hair, the easy grace with the audience.

"Keep going," I say.

Peeta skips ahead. Charlie Flynn is in a cave now, with several of his allies, including the kids from Twelve. He sits them in a semi-circle, carefully aimed at the spots where he must sense there are cameras. He starts prodding them for stories.

"Remind you of anyone?" Peeta asks.

"He was like Caesar," Katniss says, then her eyes widen. "Peeta, is that really... but..."

"It is," Peeta says. "He told me. He told me in the Capitol. But I wasn't sure. I didn't think he'd lie to me, but I had to know." He pauses it on another shot -- Charlie Flynn laughing uproariously at a story from a District Eight boy -- and says, "But that's him. Before the plastic surgeries and the stupid hair dyes. It's him. He was one of us."

"Why would he work for the Gamemakers?" Katniss asks.

"He needed a job. And he needed to disappear. There was no way he was going back to District Five -- they voted him into the arena that year."

"So that's why he was always with us," I say.

"Yeah."

"And we watched Coin assassinate a victor on live television."

Peeta nods. "And the last thing he thought he saw was me being glad about it. After everything he did for me, that's what he thought I did in the end."

Katniss takes his hand. "I'm sure he knew better."

I'm not sure of it. Not the way his face looked when those images came up all around him. I doubt Peeta thinks for a second that Caesar had time to reconsider his first impression in the few seconds before his brains landed on the camera lens.

I tell Peeta to go back to the beginning, and we watch the Quell in its entirety. I don't know what we mean to accomplish by this. It won't make Charlie Flynn or Caesar Flickerman magically reappear. But we watch him in solemn silence as he pulls together his band of hopeless cases, trying to hide them from the inevitable. We watch as the Careers finally track them down, and we watch as Caesar's smiling façade breaks, and he pulls down the house on the remaining competitors by dropping a boulder on them.

We watch the interviews after the Games, where he manages to get his smile back, and tell good stories about his friends in the arena. Candria Light asks him what he means to do next, and he jokes about learning the secrets of the rest of her hats.

But we can all see it. The look. Under the banter, the fury. The hurt in his eyes.

They're a victor's eyes now, the same as we all see in our own mirrors. I don't know how he learned to hide them over the years.

I'm going to go with not. There are arguments for both, but I think what would decide it is that Caesar himself kept it quiet, and it would be respecting his wishes. They may tell the other victors, though.

I REALLY like how you named Katniss and Peeta's kids now.I get the feeling that Pearl is Katniss' choice, with Peeta's agreement--and Charlie is Peeta's choice, with her agreement. And now I can see how she could agree.

Right, not the whole District. But under the circumstances, 1/10 the populations is seriously impressive and gives way more than a grain of truth (more like a salt shaker's worth) to the "Legend that is Gale Hawthorne."